HR Transform 2025 Highlights: What Had Everyone Talking

#1: There’s an AI-generated elephant in the room

All right, pull up a chair. Let's address the elephant in the room — AI. 

It came up in almost every conversation I had on the floor. It was hard not to: AI is set to revolutionize everything we do. Not talking about it would have been more strange. Many folks I spoke with have already embraced ChatGPT, Midjourney, or Claude in their personal lives, or they're actively integrating similar technology into their newest products. 

If you're still skeptical, that’s OK — there was a lot of hype around AI in years past, with glossy new “Now with AI!” stickers slapped on the side of existing technologies. But have you seen it lately? If you haven’t, ask v0.dev to build an app — any app. Or take a gander at sesame.com and have a conversation using the Research Preview. When you’re done, let's chat.

For industry folk, the potential of AI is exciting but also overwhelming — how will it all unfold? The product leaders I spoke with were remarkably grounded about it, and excited to tell me about more incremental products that deliver value today. For example, delivering real-time analytics on previously siloed data sets to users may not feel flashy, but it’s still a significant step forward. Improvements like this are boosting productivity, simplifying complex workflows, surfacing hard-to-find information, and tailoring user experiences.

You may be thinking OK, that’s great for this year, but what about 2026 and beyond? If automation and tooling continue to improve at the current rate, will some organizations see AI as a way to trim payroll? Maybe. However, the smarter play — as many forward-thinking HR leaders are recognizing — is leveraging AI to increase human productivity. Instead of cutting 30% of the workforce, what if we could achieve 30% more output from the talent we have today? The future belongs to organizations investing in AI adoption and workforce upskilling, finding innovative ways to enhance ROI on their greatest asset — their people.

We're rapidly approaching an era where AI tackles routine tasks, leaving humans to handle tough decisions and exception management. Embracing this shift, rather than resisting it, opens exciting new opportunities for everyone willing to partner with AI to drive progress.

Read more: Finch co-founder Ansel Parikh shares his ideas for the ways AI agents can augment human workflows in our 2025 Request for Startups.

#2: Economic uncertainty persists

After AI, the other consistent theme at this year’s conference was economic uncertainty. Despite expectations of a hiring rebound and growth surge, the market remains cautious. Companies are setting modest revenue goals, delaying significant purchases, and bracing for continued industry consolidation. The hiring climate feels flat, and organizations seem more intent on weathering the current storm than aggressively expanding their teams.

At the same time, the advent of AI has accelerated the rate of technological innovation so quickly it’s become much more difficult to put all of your proverbial product eggs in one basket. Some products that were cutting-edge as recently as two years ago are irrelevant now. Just look at Jasper’s Chrome extension, a tool that quickly wrote blogs and ad copy. It was released in 2021, but fell out of favor by the end of 2023 as more advanced tools like GPT-4 offered more sophisticated results.

An uncertain economy coupled with a still-maturing-but-already-disruptive technology means businesses will need to tread lightly when it comes to where to place their big bets. New AI-powered technologies and use cases are emerging at such a frenetic pace that it’s impossible to say what the next truly transformative product is going to look like. For investors, this makes it difficult to forecast growth for portfolio companies whose tech might be disrupted. For founders and product leaders, this makes it harder to have conviction in any one way of doing things.

You know that scene from Friends where the gang is trying to move a couch up the stairs and Ross keeps yelling “PIVOT!”? That’s the new catchphrase for founders and product leaders in this era of AI. Until the current instability shakes out, innovators need to get comfortable with pivoting quickly and often. The next wave of novel technology will likely undergo several reinventions before finding the path forward.

#3: Marketplace strategies are evolving

While companies hunker down to weather the economic uncertainty of the foreseeable future, a natural question arises: how can they still keep revenue moving up and to the right?

The most obvious answer, at least in my mind, is partnerships. Collaboration — whether it’s for co-marketing, cross-selling, or just increasing product stickiness — can go a long way in expanding two companies’ books of business. At this year’s conference, I heard repeatedly about how scarce and fiercely competitive internal development resources have become across the board — and historically, partnerships have been an afterthought or a late addition to the company’s primary go-to-market engine. 

But there’s one thing that no one seems to be talking about: the biggest blocker of partnerships has effectively been eliminated (or at least streamlined) by modern technology like AI and unified APIs. 

A lack of engineering resources has always been the biggest hurdle when forging partnerships because the two platforms had to build an integration to allow their apps to work together seamlessly. That’s why a strategy of having one or two tightly integrated partners was viable for so long. Today, those integrations can be activated in a fraction of the time through connectivity platforms like Finch, significantly lowering the technical effort required. (If you need proof, just look at Awardco and UKG, which launched two integrations 10 months earlier than expected through Finch.)

With a lower barrier to entry, we can see the playbook open up for HRIS and payroll providers who want to expand their marketplaces and add more partners. This strategy doesn't necessarily mean moving on from their preferred category partners, but rather delivering interoperability with all the tools their customers want. Think more integrated experiences, fewer referral forms. Think more net new partners, more brand awareness, and more revenue gains. Your Sales team will thank you.

I like to compare the disruptive effect of unified APIs like Disneyland without all the lines — imagine the kind of free-for-all you could have if you had the park to yourself. Now replace the lines with integration development, and the rides with partnership agreements. Sounds like fun, right?

#4: Fragmentation remains a thorn in our side

Unfortunately, this isn’t Disneyland, and not everyone has realized the value of data connectivity platforms just yet. Unified APIs like Finch have made it significantly easier to stand up integrations, and it’s obvious from the conversations I had at Transform this year that the industry has a much greater awareness of these tools now than they did just a few years ago. Still, this isn’t a change in strategy that’s adopted overnight. 

Integration challenges continue to plague our industry. Nothing frustrates sales teams more than repeatedly saying, "No, we don’t have that integration," while prospective customers yearn for seamless interoperability between their HR tech solutions. It’s easy to understand why — employers waste an average 5+ hours per week manually inputting data across platforms, hurting productivity and accuracy. On the other side, R&D teams aren’t eager to build integrations — the lifecycle management is an ongoing tax that no engineering org wants to pay (if they can help it).

Our 2025 survey of 1,000 employers found that HR and payroll integrations were the #1 factor in employers’ benefits software purchase decisions.  As the leading end-to-end connectivity platform for employment data, Finch is actively championing universal connectivity to tackle this fragmentation. Our goal is seamless data synchronization across platforms — a necessity that will only intensify as AI-driven solutions demand ever more dynamic, real-time data.

We’re working closely with private and public industry partners on API adoption, data standards, and other critical initiatives to solve this fragmentation puzzle, unlocking innovation across the entire HR tech ecosystem.

The future of HR tech is taking shape

HR Transform is always an invigorating experience — the energy is palpable when you’re surrounded by thousands of innovators who are collectively working to define the future of work. But this year in particular, with AI making a real, tangible impact and marketplace strategies rapidly evolving, it’s clear that the future of HR tech is solidifying now. 

This change takes time — it may be a few years before the AI market stabilizes enough for tomorrow’s unicorns to find the right product-market fit, and for universal data connectivity to give rise to a truly connected, open employment ecosystem. But the foundational tech that will power those tools and experiences has already arrived. It won’t be long before they’ve taken shape.

Reflecting on HR Transform, I'm energized by the possibilities and optimistic about how Finch can lead the charge in harnessing these trends for a smarter, more integrated, AI-powered workplace.

Find Finch at our next event

Missed us at Transform? Find a member of the Finch team at one of the many events we’re attending in the next few months, including WEX SPARK Health & Benefits, NAPA 401(k) Summit, and NAFE!